SEATTLE – Among the things that took off at the airport near here is a minimum wage initiative that will either destroy the local economy or keep Washington one of the nation’s bellwether states, depending on whom you talk to.

This is a beautiful city built on hills overlooking Elliot Bay and the Olympic mountains beyond to the west and Lake Washington with the snow-capped, volcano-lined Cascades to the east.

Native Americans were here going back 4,000 years. When white settlers arrived it became a frontier town, next a launching pad for gold prospectors – North to Alaska! And after the Wright Brothers did their thing at Kitty Hawk, many an airline flew to greatness on wings that Bill Boeing built, including one he launched called United. Boeing still manufacturers the giant birds nearby, but other familiar names call this place home too – Microsoft, Amazon and Starbucks, for instance.

It remains a comfortable, outdoorsy, pleasant year-round location to live and play, but inexpensive it isn’t. All that high tech raised the bar. South of here is SeaTac, Washington, site of SeaTac the airport (short for Seattle Tacoma International) and home to multitudes of airport-related workers. Voters of the little town in November passed an initiative raising the minimum wage for airport workers to $15 an hour.

It might have gone unnoticed except in the much bigger and better known Seattle, a few miles across the Green River to the north, a separate movement for $15-an-hour minimum wage was created. Kshama Sawant, a socialist, ran for city council on a promise to work to make it a reality. Mayoral candidate Ed Murray, a former state senator, joined in.

After months of demonstrations, forums, marches and campaigning, earlier this month the Seattle City Council unanimously approved a $15 minimum wage. It will be phased in over the next seven years with some exceptions. Businesses with more than 500 employees will be required to pay a minimum of $11 per hour by April next year. Larger businesses that provide health care for employees will have to pay $15 per hour by 2018.

Not everyone is excited. The first employee I discussed it with on a recent visit – ironically, at a restaurant in SeaTac – wasn’t all that moved. His employer is on the small side but this particular establishment brings in the big tips, his major source of income. “I haven’t given it much thought. I’m not sure how the tips fit in into the picture.”

It’s the workers at fast-food places, hotels, convenience stores and other small franchise operations who stand to gain the most. Those businesses also are the source of legal challenges. This week, a federal lawsuit filed by the Franchise Association, a Washington, D.C.-based business group, said Seattle’s ordinance discriminates against interstate commerce and franchise business models.

In New Jersey, voters took matters into their own hands as well. When SeaTac was voting for $15 an hour last November, Garden State voters overwhelmingly passed a ballot question to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $8.25 an hour and tie future raises to inflation. New Jersey became the 20th state to establish a minimum wage higher than the federal minimum of $7.25 – Washington state’s is $9.32, Minnesota’s $9.50. The highest is in San Francisco, $10.74.

Some thought the increase is too much, but not compared to Seattle. My colleague Michael Diamond of the Asbury Park Press figured out how long it would take New Jersey minimum wage to get to $15 an hour. He estimated with 2 percent inflation it would be 31 years and with 3 percent inflation 21 years.

What wasn’t settled in the Seattle action was the old argument about whether a higher minimum wage will force businesses to close because the cost of their products or services would be too expensive to keep them in business or whether the extra money in the paychecks of minimum wage workers would increase buying power in general and boost the economy.

That’s the bottom line of the experiment that took off in SeaTac. We have a chance to settle that once and for all.

Bob Ingle is senior New Jersey political columnist. He can be reached via e-mail at bingle@app.com. @bobingle99.